A day at Spider Valley..

Fatigue and frustration are two bad things which can happen to anyone, worse is when they hit you together. That is what happened in the first week of October, flight schedules were high and boss was in his highest stage of musth, I needed to take a break very badly which led us to Aiyur on the 13^th of October 2013.

If any of you have read Kenneth Anderson’s books, Aiyur would sound quite familiar; it’s in this reserve forest where the beautiful spider valley lies. This particular stretch fortunately is home for a decent number of elephants, whose biggest threat is still from us humans. This particular forest range is a part of a long hill range, the melagiris, which are contagious with the Bilagiri Ranga and Male Mahadeshwara hills on the south west. The fauna has dwindled down to the extent of the Tiger and other game vanishing from this part of the country; however elephants still remain king of this jungle. Elephants in this area often visit farmlands of villages bordering the forest for a light snack to a heavy meal and occasional conflicts with humans are reported.

This being said, show a little respect for the jungle and these beasts, keep safe distance and don’t try to go too close even if they don’t seem to react in the unlikely event of you coming across one. Remember, an elephant in spite of its huge weight can any day run faster than an average human and above all, you have absolutely no right to unnecessarily interfere in their life. No, the little calf being too cute is a lame excuse to go closer to them; her mom would come crashing down on you with all her might for your cute thought, if they even allow you to stay far and remain put that is.

Back to where we began, me and a colleague started off early in the morning hoping to get lucky with bird watching too, ultimately reached well past dawn due to a problem enroute. The road from Nemlieri to Aiyur Forest Rest House welcomed us with water rushing out of nemli eri and cattle blocking the road, conveying our regards to the rather funny looking villager we proceeded to Aiyur FRH. 

Nemli Eri,taken on the way back

This is where the bamboo growth meets you while the road coils itself into the jungle, crossing the elephant proof trench we headed slowly onto the jungle hoping for some spotting at Sami Eri,a lake which elephants frequent often. I am saying this on the basis of what iam told, I personally never spotted any elephants here, probably because I was never here after nightfall.  

Watch tower at Sami Eri

Sami eri always gives me feeling of Déjà vu, a similar lake with bamboo around being in Eturunagaram Wildlife Sanctuary in Andhra Pradesh too, of which I happen to be familiar.Stopping for a while and content with the birds we spotted, we moved ahead to kodakarai bus stop on the main road to Kamagiri, where a mud road deviates to the right leading to the hamlet of Kodakarai.

Bus stop on the main road to denkanikota

Now this is the tricky part, there is not much of what you can call a road, whatever exists is too steep to safely ride a bike on, if you happen to manage the gradients then there is the trouble of sharp curves, if you are riding on this road for the first time and managed to negotiate this path with no incident or accident yet (although this is highly unlikely), the road gets tougher with lots and lots of stones, rocks and all other hard round things mother earth bestowed upon us.

The road to kodakarai

 This road however is the only connectivity to people living in kodakarai to the main road leading to denkanikota and they deal with this every day. We met a few locals coming uphill who enthusiastically contributed to the conversation we were having and further donated us few groundnuts, why don’t we meet such kind lot in the cities I wonder. 

Meanwhile we reached the viewpoint which offers an amazing view of spider valley, or so I figured from the books I read. I was not really sure until I cross checked with the image of spider valley from the Wikipedia page of melagiris.

Having parked the bike at spider valley, we embarked on what felt like a journey to the centre of the earth because we chose not to follow the road and tried to make our own way through the moderate growth around. Spotted elephant dung all the way through but they were’nt fresh, so we moved on till it was almost 2pm. 

The journey uphill was far more treacherous since we decided to take the mud road under the scorching sun, the rocks around were’nt helping either. Finally, after tripping a dozen times and two nasty falls later, we reached nirvana, our bike and spider valley were both there.

Hasting our way up to kamagiri, had a decent lunch and a long talk with the local lingayat’s before slowly heading out of the forest, content with the day’s trip, renewed with enough perspective for the week ahead to be Back with the jet noise again.

Spider valley